VANDU REJECTS LIBERAL'S CALL TO ISOLATE ADDICTS

Starting at noon on Saturday (July 19), members of the Vancouver Area
Network of Drug Users will mark the group's 10th anniversary at
Oppenheimer Park. It's the same park where, a year before VANDU was
incorporated in 1998, Ann Livingston and other advocates for the
health-care rights of addicts planted crosses to commemorate the
deaths of drug users in the Downtown Eastside.

It took five years of protests and lobbying before Insite,
Vancouver's only supervised injection site, formally opened, giving
drug users not only a clean environment in which to shoot up, but
also the opportunity to access treatment and counselling.

"People are still dying, but they're not dying of overdose anymore,"
Livingston, VANDU's executive program director, told the Georgia Straight.

If Livingston has her way, more supervised injection sites will be
opened in the city, as well as in other areas where there's a
clustering of addicts who shoot up drugs in public. "I view it as a
social-justice movement," she said. "People addicted to drugs have
the right to health care."

Livingston also dismissed as "naive" the notion that addicts should
be isolated and made to kick their habit before they're allowed to
rejoin mainstream society.

This is precisely what B.C. Liberal candidate Stephen Chong has called for.

In an advisory sent to Chinese-language media regarding his formal
nomination on July 3 as the B.C. Liberal candidate for
Vancouver-Mount Pleasant, Chong stated that he wants to remove the
injection site from the constituency and keep similar facilities out
of other areas with high business and residential concentrations.
Chong later told the Straight in a phone interview that drug users
should be sent to an "island".

Albert Fok, president of the Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization
Committee, told the Straight that he doubts Chong's message will
resonate with voters, including those of Chinese descent. Fok said
that as chair of the Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, he
"took a lot of heat" from the community when he supported the opening
of Insite in 2003. However, the community's attitude has changed over
the past five years, he noted.

Fok suggested that, rather than removing Insite from the Downtown
Eastside, efforts must be made to put additional injection facilities
in other areas of Metro Vancouver.

Vancouver-Mount Pleasant NDP MLA Jenny Kwan told the Straight that
Chong should apologize to the community for his statements. "And if
he doesn't, I don't think he should run," she said. "I think he
should resign as a candidate for the Liberal party."

In a brief interview with the Straight on July 15, Chong dismissed as
"no big deal" the statements he made about Insite and drug users. He
declined to comment further, saying he'll deal with the matter if he
gets elected.